Tip of the Week

Windows 2000

Creating a Boot Disk

As an administrator, one of the essential items you should have in your Windows 2000 toolkit is a boot disk for each server you support. You can use this disk to boot up your server in the event your computer's Master Boot Record becomes corrupted. To create a boot disk, you'll first need to format a floppy disk using Windows 2000's format utilities. (Even if you bought formatted floppy disks, you must still format the disk under Windows 2000.)

After you've formatted the disk, your next step is to copy all the necessary files for booting your server to the floppy disk. You'll find these files in the root of your C: drive. Keep in mind that these files are hidden by default, so you might need to configure Windows Explorer to display hidden files. Here are the files you need to copy: ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini. If you've configured your server to dual-boot between Windows 2000 and MS-DOS (or Windows 9x/Windows Me), you should also find a file named bootsect.dos. You should copy this file to your boot disk as well. Finally, if you're using SCSI hard disks on which you've disabled the BIOS, you'll also need to copy the file named ntbootdd.sys to your boot disk. (Don't worry-if you don't find the files named bootsect.dos and ntbootdd.sys on your computer, it means you don't need them.)

Now that you have your boot floppy, you should label it and put it in that binder you keep for each of your servers. You know the binder we're talking about--the one with all of the information about your server's hardware, the device drivers you're using, the configuration of Windows NT, the software you've installed, the Service Packs you've applied, and so on. If you don't have such a binder, we strongly recommend that you create one.

(from http://www.et-inc.com/)